New York's smart grid love-fest (and how to have one in your state)

New York's smart grid love-fest (and how to have one in your state)

Quick Take: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been ultra-tough on utilities, as we told you early this year when Cuomo asked for the power to shut down under-performing utilities. But he and other New York leaders are in love with the smart grid, now that they see it as a way to make the state more resilient to storms and floods. Given that smart grids and smart meters are subject to protests and lawsuits in other parts of the country, it may pay to study New York for ideas. - By Jesse Berst

A series of natural disasters and some hard work by a public-private partnership have combined to turn the smart grid into New York's resiliency rock star. More and more of the state's thought leaders are citing grid modernization as a key to fewer outages and greater reliability. Here are a few of the contributing events and factors.

The New York State Smart Grid Consortium is a public-private partnership that promotes a statewide smart grid. I think it is the most effective state group in the country. (Use the Comment form to nominate other state-level organizations doing good work.) One reason for its success: its members come from all across the value chain, including utilities, market operators, private industry, academia, government and end users.

The Consortium wisely spends part of its time praising elected officials that support the smart grid. The most recent accolades went to New York City's Michael Bloomberg for his vision to rebuild and modernize the city's infrastructure. Bloomberg's plan calls for a smart grid that can monitor the system before, during and after major weather events.

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